Agent151: Paddling in the shallow end of tech

Digital technology has made our lives better in so many ways. We can buy pretty much anything and have it delivered to us without leaving the comfort of our armchairs. We can book a table at a restaurant with the same ease. Want a suggestion about a book you may like to read? Want to know the time of the next bus? Place a bet? Express your opinion? Find out the inside leg measurement of the Dalai Lama? Ask your mobile phone.

Somehow, no-one is at all surprised that the public sector is miles behind in taking advantage of this revolution.

There are signs that it is waking up to the possibilities digital technology offers, and that is a good thing, but the thinking is still very clunky.

CEOs of councils and other public sector bodies are saying: “Let’s write a digital strategy, that’ll sort it!”

A few even have one. They talk about digitising their interaction with residents and businesses as if it’s all about putting a digital front end on their existing customer services. But that misses the point badly. That is old fashioned channel shift, which is just putting lipstick on the pig.

It’s about the outcomes

The thinking needs to begin with the outcome for the customer. When you do that, and think about how the technology can help, you end up designing a very different intervention and therefore a very different business process and organisation to support it. This is why the technology is described as disruptive. Look at Airbnb, which is effectively a hotel chain that owns no properties.

More thinking is needed too in relation to how the investment required can be funded.

There is too much reliance on bidding for internal funding or government grants rather than taking an invest-to-save approach or leveraging private sector investment.

For example, there are huge savings to be made in social care through prevention, but the savings fall to the NHS. NHS trusts are overspending, and there is no likelihood of NHS trusts handing over large sums of cash to fund any prevention work.

Dysfunctional governance and culture clash only add to the difficulties in this case. The consequence is that little is happening.

The fact is that the technology to transform the lives of people who are in need already exists, and we in the public sector are failing those people because we are not delivering the best possible outcome.

We can do better, and there is therefore an urgent moral imperative that we should do better. We have to stop paddling in the shallow end and take the plunge.

Disruption tactics

Agile, adaptive organisations are required, with a focus on outcomes, a taste for innovation, the ability to work across sectors, and the business acumen needed to make sound commercial decisions. Does that sound like a council to you? Not yet it doesn’t!

Meanwhile, individual projects that have taken a disruptive approach are popping up around the country.

Their characteristic is that they are not driven by top down strategy but by tactical business case. And they are succeeding.

For example, developed in partnership by Cheshire East Council, Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT, Age Concern Cheshire and Opportunity Links, DemenShare.com is an online peer support network for people who are living with dementia that aims to encourage independent living through friendship and mutual support. The revolution is happening. We can and must embrace it.

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